USB Updates - Challenges, Approaches and Practical Tips

Beyond the Release: Managing Long-Term Risk and Compliance in Embedded Linux with Yocto

• Anna-Lena Marx
• April 14, 2026
• Embedded , Conferences

The embedded systems of the future will be judged by their long-term resilience and security. For many manufacturers, however, the shift from a product release to continuous lifecycle management is a significant operational hurdle.
Regulations like the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are formalizing this challenge, demanding ongoing vulnerability management and creating a backdraft of responsibility that impacts the entire supply chain.

This presentation highlights that a robust and reproducible build system is the cornerstone of any sustainable product strategy in this new environment. It will explore how the Yocto Project provides the essential framework for building future-proof and maintainable systems.
The discussion will cover how its architecture enables the critical features needed to manage long-term risk: full-stack patchability for targeted CVE fixes, reproducible builds for maintaining legacy devices, and automated Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation for regulatory transparency.
Attendees will gain actionable strategies for implementing lifecycle-aware embedded development and transforming existing product portfolios to meet evolving regulatory requirements.

Patching Unpatchable Files

• Anna-Lena Marx
• December 5, 2024
• Embedded , Conferences

In the Yocto world, the .bbappend file is a well-known and documented mechanism for altering recipe files, and an essential part of daily operations. While not common, there are instances where it becomes necessary to modify other file types, such as .inc or .bbclass, which do not offer an equivalent append mechanism. This session will summarize various strategies for effectively handling these file types when patching cannot be avoided.

In my recent presentation at the Yocto Developer Day in Vienna, I mentioned using the KAS patch mechanism for minor modifications to files like .inc or .bbclass, where the Yocto internal overwriting mechanism via .bbappend files does not apply. Initially intended as a helpful side note on how I navigated a few unique situations, this part quickly escalated into the most discussed segment of the talk. Half of the attendees I spoke with found it valuable, while the other half expressed strong objections.

How a modern Yocto setup could look like

• Anna-Lena Marx
• November 20, 2022
• Embedded , Conferences

In 2015, we built a sophisticated meeting room information system based on Android Things as a student project. As Android Things was deprecated in 2021, we started to use our Yocto Project experience to develop a maintainable, future proof embedded system.

When setting up a new project from scratch, we focused on proper solutions for

• a maintainable, well supported and patchable build environment for the embedded systems
• version control, reproducible builds and continuous integration
• license management
• a secure and stable update mechanism on image base and
• managing releases The talk aims to show how we build a system that matches our requirements using the Yocto Project, KAS, Gitlab CI, and Mender.io. Besides, we will have a short outlook to the application built in Flutter.

Presented at

• Yocto Project Summit 2022.11, virtual, 2022
• buildingIoT, Munich, 2023

Download original slides (Yocto Project Summit) Download updated slides (buildingIoT)